


finding love throughout all the noise

by catefrankie



Series: LoVe and redemption [2]
Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Songfic, not season 4 compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-09 22:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20124541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catefrankie/pseuds/catefrankie
Summary: a series of drabbles inspired by Taylor Swift’s albumreputation, for all of us who hoped to find redemption at the end of a love story too often overshadowed by revenge.





	finding love throughout all the noise

_I see nothing better, I keep him forever like a vendetta_

\-----

It’s junior year, Lilly is gone, and the world is empty and suffocating at the same time. 

She’s set apart, marked by her choice to support her father, and more than that, marked by tragedy. She feels her proximity to the whole gory melodrama like fingerprints on her skin – like warpaint on her face, making it hard for people to look her in the eye. Everyone else was there, too, but they seem to have escaped unscathed, going about their lives day by day as if the bottom hasn’t fallen out of everything they believed to be true. They date and they go to the movies and they gleefully snub one another over meaningless missteps, and she? Figures out which camera lens shoots best through motel windows. Burns casseroles and orders takeout and tries not to feel her mother’s absence. Relearns how to walk through the halls of high school without being arm in arm with a friend.

Her peers’ stubborn, disingenuous normality surrounds her like a room of funhouse mirrors, reflecting back again and again how warped she’s become in comparison to them, in comparison to who she used to be. She’s singular – one of a kind, and absolutely alone.

Almost.

When she catches his eye across the courtyard, Logan is a different kind of mirror altogether – glittering back at her, full of rage and cynicism, nothing like he used to be. She hates him, of course – she lost Lilly, and that was beyond any of their control, but Logan chose to shut her out, chose to destroy the version of himself who used to be her friend. She hates him as much for the sake of his lost, brown-eyed innocence as she does for the sake of his current, callous cruelty.

But it’s a relief, still, to watch him from a distance and to feel precisely in their ever-escalating enmity that she’s not totally alone. She’s not the only one that changed. 

She doesn’t need him. He doesn’t want her. But funny how the thing that keeps her at a distance is the same thing that keeps her glare locked on him. The game goes back and forth, nobody really winning, and nobody else able to understand why they’re even playing. It’ll be the two of them, forever. But never again the two of them, together. 

\-----

_you’ve been calling my bluff on all my usual tricks, so here’s the truth from my red lips_

\-----

It’s 3:07, there’s someone at the door and only one person she wants to see.

The thought does cross her mind that she accused him of murder not that many hours ago, that even if it is him on her doorstep, the reason is unlikely to be that he wants to see her as much as she wants to see him. That he, too, can’t bear to go through the whole night without fixing what got broken. If he is here, it’s probably to yell at her. 

But deep down, somewhere silent and subconscious that she won’t allow herself to acknowledge, she hopes it won’t matter – she hopes that Logan will forgive her, as he forgave her the last round of accusations, easily and graciously, completely sincere in his declaration that all he cared about was her – because, more than anything, she hopes that Logan will understand. Yes, she lashed out and then she ran away. Yes, she told him she trusted him and then she proved beyond any reasonable doubt that she didn’t. But she can’t help but feel a tiny bit optimistic – maybe, after everything, Logan has arrived at her home just like he showed up at the Camelot, in a burst of glory precisely when she was wishing for him. 

If she can just say what she’s feeling, tell him she was wrong and how much she’s missed him, then maybe there will be something left for them when the dust settles. Maybe everything can really be okay somehow, if they still have each other when the story ends.

\-----

_this is how the world works: you gotta leave before you get left_

\----- 

It’s summer, but the shine has started to fade off the season. The more the school year encroaches on her consciousness, the more she feels like it’s reality about to set in, that the last two months have been some kind of dream. That isn’t to say it’s always been easy – the trial and summer school certainly did their part to keep things grounded – but it was simple. She and Logan, a team. The goal: survive, in the tiny space they’ve eked out for their happiness.

But the space is getting smaller, day by day. And then day by day, Logan seems to spend less and less time in it.

She feels him edging ever closer to an explosion, and she remembers the last time he went off – remembers being damaged by the blast even though she’d only been nearby because she wanted to help. She thinks if she could stick it out, her staying nearby could maybe still make a difference this time. Old Veronica would have, fool-me-once be damned. But new Veronica isn’t sure if she wants to. It’s not so much that she’s afraid of getting hurt. But she is afraid that one day she’ll look over at Logan and she won’t recognize him – that he’ll have changed again, and she’ll never get this summer version of him back, skipping as he walks, spinning when he kisses her, and sweetly in love with her.

If it’s going to happen, she doesn’t want to watch. If she’s going to lose him, she doesn’t want it to be up close, pretending that she still has him while he loses himself. 

\-----

_if you walk away, I’d beg you on my knees to stay_

\-----

It’s a sunny day, she’s in the front seat of the X-Terra, and she doesn’t know why she’s crying.

What keeps going through her mind is _how dare he_. How dare he go from swaggering confidence to gentle concern in the blink of an eye, precisely calculated to throw her off balance. How dare he don the mantle of careless chaos that made her leave him, how dare he risk himself, for her, as if what happened to him on the bridge doesn’t already torment her with guilt day in and day out.

A million emotions war for dominance, and somewhere far off she knows she looks crazy – he saved her life, and she’s shouting at him to get out of town. But she’d rather have him a thousand miles away, so long as he’s still in the world. An impermanent separation, rather than a permanent loss. 

His eventual self-destruction seemed all too inevitable not that long ago, and she thought she made her peace with it. She thought she got far enough away. But how far could ever be far enough? If he gets hurt, if he gets himself killed, she’ll feel it no matter where he is. 

\-----

_is it too soon to do this yet? ‘cause I know that it’s delicate, isn’t it?_

\-----

It’s the Sadie Hawkins dance, his hands are on her waist, and she didn’t think this through.

They’ve never actually danced together before, which feels impossible. He’s spun them around, he’s twirled her half the times he took her hand, he’s lifted her in the air like they’re in _Dirty Dancing_, but this? Eyes locked, caught in the music, hardly moving – this is the stillest Logan has ever been, she thinks. Unlike any moment they’ve ever shared, before or after she left him.

It’s impossible to forget, when he’s holding her like this, that she left him – that she doesn’t get to look at him like this anymore. Doesn’t get to take his hand and assume he’ll follow. Doesn’t get to be close enough to feel his heart beat. 

They can talk, now, in a familiar back-and-forth of jabs and one-liners. They can catch each other’s eye in school when someone says something stupid, can exchange lazy smiles and eye rolls. They can sit in the same car, and it’s even only a little bit unbearable. Their tenuous equilibrium is hard-won, and maybe it’s not much, but it’s _something_, and she doesn’t want to lose it.

She’ll hold on until the end of the song, and then she’ll let go again. That’s all.

\----- 

_the role you made me play, of the fool_

\-----

It’s too early in the morning for her to be in the elevator of the Neptune Grand, leaving as soon as she’s arrived, but that’s where she is, and she should’ve known. 

She got caught up in the moment, she was taken in by his pretty words and the look in his eyes, but mostly she believed because she wanted to. She wanted to believe that they were tied together by fate, that he’d always be there just within reach when she needed him, that nothing as mundane as life could ever break them apart. Epic. It’s a beautiful thought. She didn’t know where to go from there, but she was willing to take a tentative step forward in response to him putting his heart on the line.

But of course, his heart wasn’t on the line at all. It was the booze, or nostalgia, or a whim, or all three. He said it and then turned around and acted like it meant nothing at all. The right words were always easy for Logan; it’s the follow-through that’s lacking. She should have known – she _is_ a keen observer of the human condition – but she didn’t see through him at all.

Her belief dies, and it won’t be rising from the dead this time. If she’s ever going to trust anybody again, she’d have to be crazy to start with him.

\-----

_we break down a little, but when I get you alone it’s so simple_

\-----

It’s first semester, freshman year, and for the first time it feels like they’re a normal couple. 

Sure, it was tragedy that brought them together, again, but now they eat off each other’s trays in the cafeteria, lie out on the quad in the sunshine with their textbooks, bicker about which electives they’ll register for together. They fly under the radar, effortlessly. No one cares what they do; everyone accepts the fact that they’re together. No one ever makes a joke about how Logan’s slumming it, there is no dramatic declaration of fidelity no-matter-what-anyone-thinks, whether-you-like-it-or-not. Just “This is Veronica, my girlfriend,” and then a choreographed series of polite nods. 

If he remains somewhat at a distance from the rest of her life, that’s not the worst thing in the world, is it? They always worked better without an audience.

Except, of course, when they don’t. But this is the adjustment period. They have to learn to be together when it’s not them-against-the-world. She has to learn how to trust him, even when she has other options. 

But this is just garden variety relationship tension. They’ve been through worse – unbelievably worse, laughably worse. This is never going to be what breaks them.

\-----

_I feel like I might sink and drown and die_

\-----

It’s the third time they’ve broken up (or maybe the fourth?) so why does it feel like this? Her life is fine, she’s never needed a boyfriend to be happy, and honestly they’ve done nothing but fight, yielding the moral high ground back and forth, for the last three weeks – so why is there this gaping hole? Who was Logan to her, that his absence tears her open, leaves her stranded?

Is this what love is? 

Even if it is, does it matter? What good does it do anyone, for her to pose the question to herself, over and over, every time she sees him? Maybe she does love him, but he’s not hers to love anymore. They had something – something good, something real – but it’s gone, now. 

\-----

_that was the last time you ever saw me, driving the getaway car_

\-----

It’s the end. Neptune is in the rearview, along with all the guilt that was threatening to engulf her.

Her father, giving up his career to save her.

Mac and Wallace, making themselves targets so that she can find someone on whom to exact justice.

Weevil, coming to her defense without even having to be asked.

She’s taken them all for granted. She knows that. And now, instead of thanking them, instead of making it right, she’s abandoning them.

Piz is in the rearview, too. There’s plenty of guilt around that, but mostly she just generally should have known better. Beaverton and Neptune aren’t exactly sister cities, and boys who play acoustic guitar and girls who solve murders aren’t exactly soulmates. She should never have pretended that kissing him in the first place was ever going to end well. Or maybe she should have pretended a little harder, at the end, that he was what she wanted – pacifism and comfort and “it’ll blow over soon enough”.

But that was never what she wanted, was it. No, she wanted “someone’s always gotta pay”. She wanted someone who would go to extremes for her, who would risk his life for her with a smile on his face. She wanted epic.

Well, this is how epic ends. On a road out of town, knowing with each mile marker that passes that they were friends, they were enemies, and then they were everything – and now they have to be nothing. There’s no other way.

**Author's Note:**

> With heartfelt thanks to the fandom.


End file.
